Small Business Thrives With GNU/Linux

Here’s a story to make your day. A small business needs to replace obsolete client PCs. They are looking at a huge expense. They call upon a young man with his own small business who installs GNU/Linux…"The computer came back two days later. The computer started up in less than a minute in Ubuntu where it used to take up to five minutes in Windows Vista. It had all the software we needed – word processor, spreadsheet and more and it is all legal without licence payments," said Mr Mullen.

"In the end, we saved around €3,000, which was very welcome," he added. Mr Mullen said the work was carried out for free by Andrew, and as a thank you they gave him a present.”

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About Robert Pogson

I am a retired teacher in Canada. I taught in the subject areas where I have worked for almost forty years: maths, physics, chemistry and computers. I love hunting, fishing, picking berries and mushrooms, too.

bw now what if you have what the Australian government has done at times. Where you must have MS Office to access and submit forms.

You have argued against what Munich is doing. You are too stupid to see government being too locked into closed source forces everyone in there country to be locked into using those products. Libreoffice is only a 100 percent sure option if you have a government like Munich.

bw
–We have a site license, I am told, so it doesn’t matter. Whenever I get a new computer, maybe every 2 to 3 years depending, it comes with a fresh copy of everything. No problems as far as I can see.–

Short sited twit. I will explain why. Why being able to install old version of MS Office on new machine is important is if you have documents that don’t work in new version of MS Office. Just because in 2 to 3 years time you buy a machine with all new software does not mean your stuff will work.

Now of course you will want to be using the new version as well right. Downgrade right consume a full license. Result of the change of no longer being able to transfer is that at times you will be forced to buy 2 copies of MS Office with a new machine so you can run the new and old versions.. Now since both of those license are stuck to that machine you cannot recover the cost any more after the migration.

bw
–We have a site license, I am told, so it doesn’t matter.–
Here is the kicker. Ok site license Windows 8 is only an upgrade. Since Windows is hardware bound. Next question how long before Site license for MS Office becomes the same.

Result increase cost for all businesses. This is more that Microsoft income is not doing that good.

bw does not matter you really need to go read your site license terms for windows then you understand why with site licenses I am minor-ally worried with the direction MS Office is going.

The threat is to move from current day MS site license usage of requiring New PC + New copy of Windows to New PC + New copy of Windows + New copy of Office. That change times by 1000 is a big blow out in costs. Remember site license is on top of that.

This is going to be fun. Office 2013 retail now welds to 1 machine. So dies every time your computer does.

Brilliant. I am going to have a fun time explaining this one to end users after there motherboard dies or something else MS calls the PC. Sorry you have to buy a new copy of MS office. All I can hope is Australian Fair Trading over rides this crap. Like they did with the idea that home users could not buy OEM copies.

bw sad point of history is a lot of vista machines were crap there complete life. Reason OEM hardware makers believed the min operational ram spec MS provided. Then processed to build machines to that crap level.

Problem is time has moved on and the parts to fix that issue are no longer around. After updates Vista requires more ram than even it starting spec.

So yes the machine might have run new with vista but vista+ updates to current day forget it in a lot of cases bw. Yes my point that more ram for the existing hardware to fix this issue with vista+updates can be worth more than new motherboard, processor and ram of modern types. So Linux it or bin it in some of these cases.

More than a couple in my opinion. Reading the article, they speak of 6 computers at an average cost of €700 and they ultimately claim to have saved €3000. So where did the €1200 go? Furthermore, this happy result had a crucial dependency on the use of virtually unpaid child labor. If discovered in my county, the owner of this business might very well find himself sent to the county jail after a review by the child protective services investigator.

Perhaps it was all innocent and not a case of abuse, but there is still the need for someone not connected to the business to step in and provide free gratis services. What happens down the road when the owner needs a change?

Also, the money that was spent must have purchased something new. As mentioned, a simple re-install of Vista, itself free of license charges, would have restored operations to whatever level was previously deemed sufficient. All that was really saved was whatever labor charges might have been made by an outside tech who might be available for future needs.

Der Balrog in fact clean install of Vista does not fix everything. Old machines playing up can have bad ram or failing hard drive. There are points you should cut your losses on hard-drives to mitigate risk for business usage.

Vista was not known as a rapid starting beast even as a clean install.

If you read carefully not all were reconditioned some were replaced.

This case I am a bit like you Der Balrog that I wonder if what was done is correct. Old and brand new machines I run full set of key hardware diagnostics. Ram, Harddrive and basic cpu function tests. Just to make sure I am not placing a either a old or a new lemon. Ok works 99.99 percent of the time 0.1 is a suspect power-supply that slip through and that can be old and new. Yes I do get brand new machines that are lemons. Shipping can be hard on computers.

Trade in prices these days are mostly scrap metal prices. So yes if the machine is still functional reconditioning might. Ubuntu runs in less ram than Vista does.

Der Balrog buying more ram to make a vista machine run well can at times be worth more than scraping it and buying new motherboard new cpu and new style ram due to the style ram the motherboard wants not being in mass production any more.

Deleting vista for Ubuntu to get machine to perform at decent speed can be valid due to the option to get vista to run well being worth more than the machine.

So there are a few factors here. I would not be 100 percent sure the right things have been done like checking how old the harddrive is.

Mind you 700 Euro comes to About 900 AUD that is about right here in Australia. But that could be because Ms is gouging on pricing for MS office business and a few other things. Currently before the consumer watchdog. I don’t know if the where they are has a gouging problem like Australia has. Some cases we are paying double to treble USA prices on software.

1. If a business owner claims that new computers would cost him 700 Euros per computer, he should go out of business fast.

2. If an article begins like this: “Sean Mullen explained that his three laptops and three desktop computers needed replacement because of age and infections […]”, then you know that a re-install of Vista and the creation of standard user accounts would’ve done the job.

I do this all the freaking time. Save people hundred or thousands of dollars in IT.

I’ve been getting people to purchase Chromebooks for home use, as they just need something to browse the web. Four Chromebooks and you can outfit an entire family. $1000 for a Windows 8 device? Seriously??

Now I am looking at Ubuntu phones and MK812 Android devices to promote.

My Mission

My observations and opinions about IT are based on 40 years of use in science and technology and lately, in education. I like IT that is fast, cost-effective and reliable. I do not care whether my solution is the same as yours. I like to think for myself.

My first use of GNU/Linux in 2001 was so remarkably better than what I had been using, I feel it is important work to share GNU/Linux with the world. I have been blessed by working in schools where students and school systems have benefited by good, modular software easily installed in most systems.

I have shown GNU/Linux to thousands of students and hundreds of teachers over the years and will continue in some way doing that until I die in spite of the opposition.